A winter storm rocked Britain at the very end of November. Government officials said that due to the 'unprecedentedly' early date they couldn't have been prepared. And they sure weren't. Everyone had a good chuckle about in hindsight, as if the snow had begun a day or two later, once it was December, we doubted they would have suddenly had enough snow plows, shovels, salt and grit to deal with the snow. There were a number of factors that made handling the snow difficult. It snowed day after day for several days in a row, leading to a foot of accumulation in some areas of Scotland. However, the temperature stayed fairly warm by Canadian winter standards, which led to the snow being heavy and damp, hard to clear, and prone to melting in the day, freezing over night, and then ending up as a layer of ice under the next day's snow fall.
The infrastructure just isn't in place here to deal with continual or large snowfalls. There just aren't enough snowplows in the cities, along the main highways or at the airports. This led to many airport closures, dangerously icy city streets and the closing of the highway between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The trains in some areas stopped running. Between Edinburgh and Glasgow trains were officially reduced to 2 an hour, making every stop rather than alternating and turing the 40 minute journey into about an hour 20. City buses gave up on following any schedule and would suddenly change their routes due to road conditions (and/or hills). One day they were suddenly cancelled at noon, then slowly reinstated around 5, even though it was barely snowing. People are not required to shovel the sidewalk in front of their homes or shops, so people don't have shovels, the pavement isn't cleared, and huge stretches of sidewalk became dangerous slippery ice rinks as the snow was packed down by boots in the day and freezing over at night. I felt so bad for older residents of the city who would no doubt feel trapped by the snow and ice. I took the bus a lot more often than normal because it seemed a lot safer than walking on ice or along streets with dangerous drivers. People here don't know how to drive in slippery conditions, leading to countless vehicles getting stuck at the bottom of hills. On the no. 2 bus we came across the previous 2 that had gotten stuck at the bottom of a hill. Our driver briefly pulled over to heckle the other's driver... For me the worst consequence of the dangerous roads was the lack of food staples reaching grocery store shelves. We went days without being able to find milk or bread in the grocery stores in our area. The few deliveries that did make it in were snapped up quickly. I was so happy to come across a well-stocked Tesco's the one day that I scooped up two containers of milk on my way to school, stuck them in the office fridge, then carried them home again.
We were very lucky really during the bad weather. Our flat is decently insulated, has double-glazed windows and good gas central heating, so we were warm. Derek couldn't get to school much during the last week before we travelled home for Christmas, as inter-city buses were completely cancelled and the trains were few and sporadic. Concerned that we might miss our 9am flight out of Glasgow (the plan had been to take the first train out of Edinburgh in the morning, but we knew we couldn't rely on them to be on schedule anymore), Derek booked us a room at an airport hotel for the night before, and we took a mid-afternoon train the day before. The train was slow and late, and the main transport routes (both road and rail) still weren't running at full capacity even though it hadn't snowed for 3 days. It was really nice getting to spend a night away, and we made our flight with no problem (except perhaps the inconvenience of having to pull our luggage along the snow-covered streets between the hotel and the airport).
Scotland's transport minister was interrogated about why the country was allowed to shut down for day after day. People had been stuck on major roads for up to 14 hours at a time. Dairies had to dump expiring milk because their trucks couldn't transport it to the waiting cities, and city dwellers in Scotland's capital couldn't get milk and bread. He said the snow was unprecedented. Really? It's snowed every winter we've been here, and that's three in a row. It might be worth investing in a few more snowplows. Britain's GDP growth for the last quarter of 2010 was negative 0.5%. They blamed it on the weather.
Now that we're back in Edinburgh our lives are dominated by schoolwork, as it should be. I'm hoping to have handed in the final product by the end of 2011, and that goal has me reading a lot right now. Most of my reading is of journal articles found online, so when I'm done work for the day usually the last thing I want to do is is stare at a computer screen for another few hours, hence the decrease in blogging and other electronic communication. Derek's gone for over 11 hours a day during the week, and is enjoying his work, research and teaching in Glasgow, so that makes both of us happy. A concerted effort over Christmas to find a couple good board games and other games has resulted in more evenings spent away from the computer and tv screens, which is a good thing. We've been playing Scrabble, Scrabble Upwords (very fun -- we highly recommend it!), Yahtzee, cribbage, The Game of Life and Boggle (both on my iPod, so still a screen but lots of fun). And of course there's socialising here with friends and chatting with family back home. In all I think we've settled into a somewhat new routine for 2011 and are feeling very optimistic about this unfolding year :)
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